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please tell me what kind of woman
you are looking for. varnish over my body in cold storage, let me suck milk from a ribcage. treading water is fine until a bloated pomegranate needs tending. I could grow plump on horse meat or an allowance of oysters. my passport is a fetal bull. crowning, I offer you memories of apron, horseradish, razor blade, the price is ambivalent to me. my name is not an animal’s head, a cup bearing black tar, a harvest of mink stoles. I would be an intimate citizen, a moonless pursuit, an absolute sculpture. When I was raised, born of the earth
blood-soaked in toil and mirth because Mother demanded blood for life and from which I was raised blood of frozen white, that melts in the spring sun water, blood, for the life of me the death of me Happy, fatal, sorrow-filled spring Those freakish curling redwoods- spiking up from the earth bloody with rainwater dew Now my flowers flecks are stained if the Gods bore me pure; I would retain my whiteness of spring-melted blood, feminine bed sheets soaked into Mother Earth My Father the Sun raised me unclean, and red strained Flowering pink She fed on me; I fed on her.
It was a Queer feeling, Falling. I tasted the fruit, and i choked. Is this how Adam met Eve? Trigger Warning: eating disorders
i can feel myself balancing on a ledge, trying not to slip back into who i once was, but the pull of it is almost too much to resist. if i’m not careful, it’ll drag me four stories to the ground, killing me upon impact. i feel it in the morning when the cold water hits my empty stomach. on the days when i open my mother’s sewing box to hem a skirt that once was too small and see a tape measure. when i see walk around the grocery store and see a scale, everything in me longing to step on it and finally know the magic number that could make or break my day. my brain says life would be easier if i was starving, and sometimes i think it’s right. lowly
lonely low-key i miss the old me a girl more carefree less ugly sweet like honey no filter off-kilter please don’t kill her she’s pure, clean serene, sleeping the sleep of a seemingly innocent dream girl don’t scream In this version of history, Marge never went to college / Marge went to college briefly / Marge went to an all-girls college in the Roaring 1920’s / in pre-revolution Iran / in 2022 Afghanistan / in 2005 Harvard, when the school’s President attributed underrepresentation of women in science to:
Controversy arose
when Marge wore pants / rode a bike / drove a car / played baseball / practiced medicine / Marge was jailed / sent to an asylum for reading too much and managing her own finances / Marge was rich and White / Marge was poor and White / Marge was rich and Latina / “Congratulations.”
That’s what they said. We celebrated the fact that, every month, I now have to stare at scarlet drops running down the bowl. They look at me differently when I walk into class, or down the street... everywhere really, tragically. I won’t lie and say I enjoy their plaudits even though that’s what they think is true. The way they examine me, makes me uncomfortable. I feel the need to hide for fear I will be snatched up, so they can fulfill their desire to get an even closer look and uncover everything I want to keep to myself and protect. Trigger warning: homophobia
late-evening february I am blooming passionately and feared as the shunned on their lonesome patios I am modeling out-of-season christmas socks I am chugging a glass of whole milk and dropping dry cereal in the snow I am dreaming -- —glaring towards to setting sun with unshaded blue eyes of the women forming into wives under the arms of their ballroom men under the banners: last high-school dance under the mistletoe: he collects her lips under the living room ceiling fan: fifty-second anniversary where I sit: watching it on the big screen I am ripping my romance movie ticket into scraps I am dreaming -- —I want to become my father’s daughter he’d carry my arm down the aisle meet my husband when we reach the end clapping for our lives prisoned together (unashamed in this dream: we father and daughter dance) I am dreaming-- —your red-chipped nail polish still holding my shaking hand of waiting at the aisle end turning women in gowns What a Rhinestone Means to Me— Duplex
After Jericho Brown My glamor is my counterculture Holding an x and y, I defy the suit and tie. To my birth, I am not tied But I cinch my waist with a sash of choice. Rhinestones over suede is a choice To persuade a toast in a champagne glass. “To your womanhood,” cheers my mirror’s glass For she knows how hard I fought for my pearls. From one synapse, She grew like a pearl After a grain of estrogen slipped through my lips. When I line my eyes and paint my lips I dot the “i” and cross the “t” in “authentic.” Watch the queen dressed in authenticity because Her glamor is her counterculture. trigger warning: homophobia and then, it was my second time hearing “the l slur” my father was born from a barber shop to the left
of my grandmother’s laundromat. he grew up and grew back and married the hair comb his father and his father’s father wielded, everyday, my nana to be drove him up their holler in an old brown buick —always late, always to pick up my mother. scolding him for his tardy slip, my nana to be wore a cross around her neck: held it, prayed to jesus every morning, lunch, and night. she told me once that she wasn’t irish, she wasn’t catholic. 23 and Me reports she was wrong. 25% ireland, 75% bible belt, I wonder: are You what you grow from? my first daycare was a sunday school. then i was grape juice and crackers. my father dreamt of walking in that church, in my wedding. no one prepared us
for what was to come. our brain, body, and spirit now changed. where curiosity once lived, burdens now lie. was it for the better? a bird in its cage
cannot fathom the ache felt by a girl desiring to create i try and i try ponder and feel peel a tangerine but i still don’t feel real is there something inside of me? a messy note tainted with blood “you could do something bigger than this” repressed from exploding unbeknownst to knowing i am not glowing should i keep flowing? when I die
bury me as a tree grind my bones into the finest ash mixed with fertilizer into that of the weeping willow tree when i die bury me as a tree so i can be reborn to provide shade for the tired passerby shelter for the homeless home to nest wandering robins and swallows and the rope swing that decorates my branch - dad’s gift to his little girl when i die bury me as a tree build a bench underneath my willow curtains to let the elderly couple sit they reminisce their love on their 56th wedding anniversary when i die bury me as a tree my trunk hopes to be carved with hearts and initials of young lovebirds unsure of their own fate after sharing their first kiss under the weeping willow tree I long to touch her but fear
the lash of rejection my touch may incite. Sometimes, she needs a mothers love, though to voice such a need would leave a soured scent on her skin no amount of perfume could erase. Occasionally, she emerges like a frightened rabbit from the grip of the unreliable narrator claiming squatters rights in a recess at the back of her head. And all I can do is wait. Wait on the sidelines in the hope one day she’ll throw the ball my way and I will still have it in me to catch it. ghosts
we are like ghosts in an old library. not quite knowing what we’re doing or what we’re looking for. searching for. if that is, in fact, what we are doing. a tether so forged in the fires of friendship. two sisters, not of the same blood but kin just the same. two apparitions, two spirits who know how to be alone together. feel that quaking sadness together, and still have no answers. no resolution, just an open desire to live, to experience more. there is something to the act of exploration that is healing. It is March again
with drowsy Dahlias on my terrace swaying to the tune of the gentle zephyr As I hide my face under my thick blanket I realize that the piercing winter is departing with wistful eyes that are moist with tears ruminating on what you put me through years ago This act of being a champion in forgiving and forgetting is slowly becoming difficult to continue how long can one hide? there is a limit to everything How can I conceal what is inside my heart: a fusion of brokenness and light this light has been suppressed for so long that it has started doubting its potency how can I hide that which has made my countenance perpetually grim? A man without limbs
grapples with negativity to function properly. She is not just my mother. The voracious nooks and crannies of this house have been nudging me: who will tend to us, now? whose smile will warm us up? I so often ignore these things in a futile attempt for survival,
But I know they will erupt into something bigger. What will start as something so small, so miniscule, Will eventually erupt into something I cannot contain with any amount of perfection. It’s like waiting for a pot to boil, except you forget about it and leave and the house burns down. You still have to sleep in the house, though, because it’s your only house and you’re a child. So you lay down in the remains, where there are no walls, only boards, and try to sleep. Maybe one night it will storm and there won’t be a roof or walls to protect you. When this happens you will just let it hit you and freeze. You will welcome the numbness. The next day you will get up and start building the house again. It will not stand long, but what’s important is that you rebuild anyway. I like the girl dogs the most,
how they care so easily, licking and curling around their pups. I like their girl dog greetings, Wiggle your tooshie, honey, wag your tail! Is that what you mean when you call me a “bitch”? Because somewhere inside the smooth skin of my body, there beats a small but weighted howl flowing from life’s force. Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to place your hand over my chest and feel the heavy beating affectionate creation that thinks, that knows, it will bond with the newborn. And yet after all I’ve done, you still snarl “bitch.” Fair Luna, paintress of the night,
Employs her brush with polished skill Upon our quadrate roof to fill It with the colours cream and white. Men viewing from skyscrapers might Deem it a pink sheet—such a thrill! Fair Luna, paintress of the night, Employs her brush with polished skill. This roof looks pocked to naked sight; Therefore, it takes the shielding spill Of moon-made hues (like man's strong will to paint his griefs with laughter bright). Fair Luna, paintress of the night, Employs her brush with polished skill. |